Hosted by Sugar Storm studio Coming soon in 2025 – New Print Club Dates! Watch this space A pay-as-you-go screen printing club open to all. Continue or develop your screen printing practice using our print facilities or start a new hobby with the guidance and advice of a professional screen printer. Inductions: 11am – 2pm Open access: 2.30pm – 5.30pm Booking Links coming soon
Welcome to the Grrrl Zine Library Open Day! Join us at The Old Waterworks to explore our collection of 900 feminist zines. The Grrrl Zine Library is ✔️ Catalogued ✔️ Organised ✔️ Ready for visitors We’re excited to welcome guests to the Grrrl Zine Library revamp for monthly open days. We welcome students, researchers, activists, artists, and those who want a nosey to discover our collection of over 900 feminist zines from early 80s fanzines right through to zines published this year. You’ll be able to browse the collection in your own time, with Grrrl founder Lu Williams on hand to help locate publications. We’ll also have our shiny new Library Portal to help you browse what we have in the collection by
Risograph Inductions and Open Access Risograph printing at The Old Waterworks will return very soon, in order to make use of the open access sessions, you will first need to have an induction at TOW. For further enquires contact info@theoldwaterworks.com
The Old Waterworks and The Other MA host reading groups, workshops and events that explore the publications at Pluto Press. We hold a growing library of Pluto Press books here at The Old Waterworks, so next time you visit us, come and check them out. In 2024 we are exploring the themes of Sophie K Rosa’s book Radical Intimacy through a series of events hosted at The Old Waterworks with our friends The Other MA. Watch this space for more updates
Ruth Jones founded The Agency of Visible Women in 2018. Initially intended as a play on words for a group exhibition, The Agency’s positive impact on its members in its capacity as an artist network resulted in Ruth and Damien Robinson’s determination to explore its potential. Ruth and Damien conducted research in their home town of Southend, working with the womxn and femmes they know and those they had not yet met. Out of this they created a publication giving voice to their collaborators’ (and their own) experiences within the creative sector. The resulting publication is “A Snapshot of Southend as a Cultural Environment for Womxn Artists”, a risographed artists’ edition of 50, published by The Old Waterworks. This is
Survival on Southend’s new coast, Southend-under-Sea 22 May – 19 June 2021 ‘Precarious straits ~ survival on Southend’s new coast, Southend-under-Sea’ is a collaborative project from TOMA (The Other MA) and TOW (The Old Waterworks) and is a Creative Estuary co-commission with additional funding from Arts Council England. The project consisted of a group exhibition, a series of events, workshops, a postal care package, new writing and poster commissions responding to the precarious times we inevitably face. The exhibition will be at the TOMA Project Space and a series of events and workshops leading away from the rising tides of the estuary, down the high street and in-land to TOW. Alongside this activity we have invited three writers-in-residence, Holly Firmin, Rose
31 August – 22 October 2019 my inner ear could no longer take those limitless seas/These supple waters is a work in progress, a test-bed for a new, interdisciplinary approach within Emily Hawes’ practice. Working at the intersection of choreography, video and site-specific research, this assemblage of works form an attentive and informal survey of the Thames and Blackwater estuaries. It is the first iteration—comprising of four new responses—to a period of time spent learning about the Essex estuaries. In May 2019 Emily Hawes stayed in Southend-on-Sea investigating conservation projects, sites of ecological significance, estuarine communities and industrial histories along the Thames and Blackwater estuaries. Drawing from ideas of embodiment and ecological ethics she wanted to think about how the
24 September – 5 November 2017 The Old Waterworks is pleased to announce The Jump Room by Richard Whitby. This is the third iteration of Whitby’s project, which will incorporate a newly commissioned two- screen video installation with a set of drawings, a performance in Southend-on-Sea this Autumn with Sooyon Kim and Siôn Parkinson, and a publication with texts by Honor Gavin and Virginia Woolf. The Jump Room takes its name from a conspiracy theory alleging the existence of devices allowing teleportation between Earth and Mars, installed in the form of ordinary looking elevators in several buildings in the US. Theories such as this one seem to explain the world through complex but linear and apparently evidenced narrative. Whitby is
